Bahrain GP: MF1 race notes

It was a disappointing end to a tough weekend for MF1 Racing, as the
team struggled to find both pace and reliability at the Bahrain
International Circuit in Sakhir. Christijan Albers suffered a driveshaft
failure at the start, while Tiago ...

It was a disappointing end to a tough weekend for MF1 Racing, as the
team struggled to find both pace and reliability at the Bahrain
International Circuit in Sakhir. Christijan Albers suffered a driveshaft
failure at the start, while Tiago Monteiro's car was diagnosed with a
terminal transmission problem that forced him into the T-Car.

On a positive note, Tiago Monteiro overcame a myriad of problems to earn
19th finish of his 20-race Formula 1 career. Despite a complete lack of
familiarity with a car that was not optimised for him and being forced to
start the race from the pit lane, the 2005 reliability leader once again
demonstrated an uncanny ability to get the job done, no matter the
obstacles.

Colin Kolles, Managing Director:

"Today was a very difficult day for the
team, but sometimes these things happen, unfortunately. You can't control
luck, so there's no point dwelling on this. Now, we are looking forward
to working together with our technical partners to improve our overall
package and demonstrate the performance we know we are capable of."

Adrian Burgess, Sporting Director:

"We finished with one car in our first
race of the year, Tiago doing a good job to bring the T-Car home, which
he'd never driven before. It was an unfortunate start of the year for
Christijan, who suffered a mechanical failure on the grid. We're not
happy with the result today, but we'll do our best to fix it and get our
season started properly at the next race."

Tiago Monteiro:

"Obviously, it wasn't an easy weekend. The T-Car wasn't really set
up for me, so it was a compromise in terms of seating position and other
things, and fairly uncomfortable to drive throughout the race. But I had
to remain focused on the race, pushing as hard as I could to bring the
car home."

"We had our share of trouble but, you know, that's racing. Let's
hope we got all our bad luck out of the way here so that we can look
forward to better results for the rest of the season. The car is
definitely faster and better than it was last year. It's not quick enough
at the moment, but I'm sure we can find the speed."

Christijan Albers:

"It's a shame that I didn't get to drive at all, because we were
looking forward to gathering more data for Malaysia. It's really
unfortunate, because we've never had that (driveshaft) problem before and
it's just one of those things that's impossible to predict."

"What makes it
even more frustrating is that I think our capabilities were much better
than what we showed in qualifying and had we not suffered such bad luck,
I think we might have run a reasonable race."